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The Influence of War Digital History ID 4504
The common wisdom tells us that war speeds up invention -- that airplane performance, ship technology, and engine design all raced ahead during WW-I and II -- that governments can speed the creation of ideas. But there's good reason to ask if this is really true. I'll use airplane speeds to show why I have doubts, but any other technology would show the same thing. Airplane speeds are a good thing to look at because we know how badly everybody wanted to speed up their planes during WW-I and II.
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